This book was recommended to me by a friend. I have few friends that truly understand what sorts of books I enjoy reading. I don't think anyone really gets my reading preferences as much as my brother. Anyway, this particular friend has given me good recommendations in the past, and he likes different books than I do, so his recommendations challenge me to read outside my comfort zone.

I'll sum this book up for you. It's about zombies. I know what you're thinking... 28 Days Later, I am Legend, Walking Dead etc. (for the record, only one of those is actually about zombies, the other two are outbreak stories). This book is different. In "Handling the Undead" the dead arise. Their metabolism begins working again, but their brains not as much. Those that have been dead longer and have reached the later stages of decay have troubles moving. Those that died in the hours before the event that made the dead rise (no one really knows what event that is) have more movement and some even the ability to communicate. The undead go about their business as usual until they are rounded up. As it turns out, there is a telepathic link between undead and some people can even pick up on it. It's not like the undead communicate with each other, they can be telepathically affected by the intent of thoughts. The book follows a couple different people who are trying to figure out what to do with the undead.

Here are my thoughts on the book:

I recently discovered that this book was classified as a horror story. I am completely shocked that it is supposed to be a horror story. The story was pretty flat the whole way through. Every time something exciting was going to happen, the perspective changed. It's like in those old horror movies when you know someone is going to die and the killer raises the knife, and suddenly you're seeing it from the point of view of the person in the other room and all you hear is the scream. The resolution at the end of the story was disappointing and ambiguous. There are a couple "exciting" moments. I put exciting in quotes because if I were to rate it 1-10 with 10 being the most exciting thing I've ever read, I would give those moments a 4.

The characters were well thought out and written. The story is way more original than I expected. I anticipated a fairly typical zombie story, but this story put a whole new twist on things.

My review isn't going to be too long because I was almost entirely unimpressed with this book. The writing was good enough to keep me reading but the story wasn't exciting enough to make me fall in love with this book. Besides the originality of the plot, I found the rest of the book to be pretty blah.

For the record, these reviews are my personal opinions about the books I volunteer to read. I'm not getting paid by anyone to read or review them. A lot of people charge a penny for their thoughts... mine are free.